Training consists of two parts: communicating to your dog what you want, and motivating your dog to do it. Food can help with both. But before you can start, you need to get his attention. Without it, training is impossible. Using food gives you an easy way to get your dog’s attention. You have something he wants, so he will be anxious to learn how to get it.
Teaching a dog to lie down is a good example of how food works well for communicating what you want. Let’s say you want to train your full-grown Great Dane, Lyndy, to lie down. You could try to pull her down with the leash. If she decides to resist, and she probably will since it is instinctive for a dog to brace against the force of something pulling on her, you’re in for quite a battle. Alternatively, you could lift her front legs when she is sitting and gradually ease her down.
Unfortunately, the only thing Lyndy may learn from this is to allow herself to be lifted down, while you get a sore back. Dogs often do not understand that you want them to make a motion on their own, even after you have helped them do that motion many times
An easier way would be to use food. Attach it to your dog’s nose like a magnet, and slowly draw her down to the floor. Voilà! Easy, huh? And the motion you make with your hand becomes a hand signal when you no longer need the food in your hand.
The second part of training—motivating your dog to do what you want—involves making a choice. You can make your dog do what you want out of fear of punishment, or you can make your dog work to earn a reward. The use of food to motivate your dog utilizes the psychological principle of positive reinforcement.
Positive reinforcement is part of a larger theory of learning known as behavior modification. Basically, the principle of positive reinforcement says that positive reinforcement increases the probability that the behavior preceding it will occur again. For example, if you call your dog and he gets a treat when he comes, he is more likely to come the next time you call. In less fancy terminology, a positive reinforcement is a reward.
While there are many types of rewards for dogs, food is convenient and easy to use, can be given in small amounts, can function as a magnet to draw a dog into a desired position, and is appealing to a wide variety of dogs. It is good for dogs of all ages, from bouncy seven-week-old puppies, to unruly adolescents, to set-in-their-ways adult dogs, to fragile old dogs. Food works well for all breeds, from the eager-to-please Golden Retriever to the difficult-to-persuade Chow Chow. It also works for mixed breeds, and for dogs of all personalities. Food is a good tool to build the confidence of shy dogs and to work with aggressive dogs.
Using food as a training tool does not require athletic strength or coordination. Because of this it is an ideal method for children, older people, or someone who has physical limitations. And while timing is important in the successful use of food, bad timing of food delivery is not going to cause the problems that bad timing of force causes.
Other Rewards
There are other rewards in addition to food. A reward, or positive reinforcement,
is anything the dog is willing to work to earn. Rewards other than
food can be a tennis ball or favorite toy, freedom to explore a new environment,
a chasing or wrestling game with the owner, an opportunity to play
with other dogs, and praise. Praise is the only reward utilized in many methods of dog training. In reality, praise functions as a very weak reward for most dogs. Trainers who are disdainful of the use of food often assert proudly that their dogs work for praise, implying that their training is superior because their dogs work out of love. However, these trainers are combining praise with strong collar corrections. A good example would be the traditional way of training a dog to heel, which is walking on the handler’s left side without pulling on the leash. The dog is commanded to heel, then given jerks on the leash whenever he moves out of the desired position. (Does this sound familiar?) He is then praised when he is back in position. After repetition, the dog responds to the heel command without the leash being jerked, and is praised when he does so. At this point it appears that the dog is working to earn praise. What is really happening is that the dog is working to avoid being jerked on the leash.
Nonetheless, praise is a necessary part of dog training the positive way. Praise strengthens the social bond between dog and trainer. It enables the dog to tell what the trainer is feeling. The dog is accustomed to “reading” his owner’s mood by observing his body language and listening to his tone of voice. (Hopefully, you will soon be able to read your dog’s body language as well as he reads yours.) The dog needs the reassurance verbal praise provides.
The dog is routinely talked to in his daily life with his owner and would be stressed by a sudden silence during training. It’s easy to forget to praise your dog when you are also giving food rewards. Actually, you should always praise your dog before giving him his food reward.
When you do this, the praise takes on the rewarding properties of the food. The praise becomes a “conditioned reinforcer.” A conditioned reinforcer is something that is initially meaningless, such as the words “good dog” are to a dog, but through association with an already established reward, the conditioned reinforcer becomes rewarding. Most dogs learn the meaning of “good dog” through unintentional training on the part of the owner. The dog makes an association between the words “good dog” and being petted by a happy owner.
With a conditioned reinforcer, you can reward the dog when you don’t have food and you can reward behaviors when the dog is away from you and you can’t give him food. So praise has two roles: as a conditioned reinforcer, and as reassurance.
You may be worried about your dog’s behavior being dependent on the food rewards—that he won’t obey your commands unless you have food in your hands. While this is a real concern, I’ll show you how to prevent this from happening by using the food properly in training, then gradually reducing your dog’s dependence on it.
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